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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27578603">i'll be known by the strength of your heart</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissmeinnewyork/pseuds/kissmeinnewyork'>kissmeinnewyork</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fleabag (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Kissing, Romance, Shaving, i love these two, they make me want to cry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-08 23:55:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,146</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27578603</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissmeinnewyork/pseuds/kissmeinnewyork</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Why does this always happen with you?” He asks. “It’s like…we’re electrically charged. I can’t function unless I’m close to you.”</p><p>(Well, at least the clingy thing isn’t just her, then.)</p><p>fleabag/priest, and a morning after conversation</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Fleabag/Priest (Fleabag)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>77</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i'll be known by the strength of your heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>it's fleabag's turn to get the kissmeinnewyork signature shaving fic! that and after writing my last fic i am thoroughly addicted to writing dialogue for these two. i really hope you enjoy reading as much as i liked writing. all comments and kudos appreciated.</p><p>title - forever ago by woodlock</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When she wakes, his side of the bed is empty. It doesn’t worry her. He’s not the kind to sneak out during the early hours—the deed is already done, whether he stays is not going to change that. That’s the logic he’s chosen to adopt, anyway.</p><p>(<em>My end will come someday, </em>he said, <em>and I am damned forevermore regardless if I drink this coffee or not. So I’m going to really fucking enjoy this coffee and worry about the eternal damnation much, much later.)</em></p><p>Besides, the walls of her flat are a lot thinner than she’d like and there’s noises coming from her bathroom, so if he <em>isn’t </em>the culprit there is something pretty fucking worrying going on. Pushing back the sheets, she pulls on the jumper he’s strewn across the end of the bed and leaves her bra hanging off the headrest. She’s not going to be wearing that today if she can help it.</p><p>(It’s one she thinks Harry must have bought her—comfortable, reasonably priced, <em>M&amp;S </em>on the label. It’s the kind of bra that is supposed to sit neatly in a designated underwear draw next to comfortable knickers and comfortable tights, but it really fucking turns her on to have something so boring ripped off by his hands. Like yeah, <em>fuck, </em>you even make Marks-and-fucking-Spencer’s a borderline spiritual experience.)</p><p>The bathroom door is closed so she pulls on the handle, the lock clunking loudly.</p><p>“Hey!” he says, voice muffled from the other side. “What are you doing?”</p><p>“I need a piss,” she says, eloquent as ever, and his laugh is resigned (like he might as well be saying <em>of course you do). </em>“Let me in.”</p><p>“I could be taking a shit!”</p><p>“Are you taking a shit?”</p><p>“No, but that’s not the point. Bathrooms have locks for a reason.”</p><p>Yes, they do, she thinks. In her experience bathrooms have locks so you can have a discrete wank whilst your family have dinner downstairs, or to indulge in a mental fucking breakdown in peace. But in this instance—she’s being clingy. Spending a second without him is absolute utter torture. She almost rolls her eyes at herself, because this is what she’s turned into. She’s expecting her <em>world's shittiest feminist </em>award to come in the post any day now.</p><p>“If you’re worried about me seeing your dick, I wouldn’t be, because I have seen it <em>very—</em>”</p><p>“Jesus Christ!” He interrupts, frantically unbolting the door. He’s standing in just his underwear, hair scruffy and dishevelled. It’s so fucking adorable she’d shag him right now on the bathroom tiles if she could. For a moment, it’s like they’re breathing each other in. His eyes fully observe her frame, lingering across her chest. “I was going to get mad, but you look so sexy in my jumper that I’ll put those feelings on the back-burner for now.”</p><p>She smiles, pushing past him to go to the toilet. She wasn’t lying about needing a piss and he’s so far past the point of questioning it that he lets it happen. “Do you shit in other people’s houses?”</p><p>He’s wearing that same disbelieving grin, folding his arms and standing with his back against the cabinet. “I’m sorry?”</p><p>“The whole time I was with Harry he didn’t take a shit in this flat <em>once. </em>It didn’t matter that he basically lived here. He’d get up in the middle of the night and use the public toilets down the road rather than poo knowing I was next door. He’d sit down and the anxiety would just send it straight back up again.” She turns to grab some toilet roll, but the holder is empty. Instinctively, he goes beneath the sink, passing her a fresh one. “I think he went to the doctors about it, and they couldn’t tell if he needed medication or a therapist.”</p><p>“Poor guy. That is absolute insanity. And, just so we know where we stand, I am more than happy to take a shit in this house in the knowledge you are sitting next door and, more likely than not, listening in.”</p><p>“Good.” She says, turning to flush. “What are you doing in here anyway?”</p><p>He runs a hand over his chin thoughtfully. “I was looking to see if you have anything I could shave with. I haven’t been home in two days, and I don’t want Pam to think I’ve been on a bender.”</p><p>She smirks a little. <em>A bender. </em>That’s a good way of putting it. There was certainly some bending involved. “Where does she think you are?”</p><p>"Homeless shelter in Peckham. And don’t you fucking dare comment. I know I’m a terrible person and it’s all your fault so you are in absolutely no position to criticise.” It’s said in jest, so she doesn’t dwell on it. They try not to discuss morality but sometimes it just…bleeds through. Inevitably, really, considering his profession and her tendency to do terrible, terrible things.</p><p>(<em>I am not one of your bad decisions, </em>he’d whispered one night, when the room was dark and her thoughts were darker. <em>And you are not one of mine.</em>)</p><p>Their shoulders brush together whilst she washes her hands, and he brushes a strand of her hair behind her ear. God, this is intimate, she thinks. Intimate doesn’t even cover it. The sexiest thing Harry ever did was cry when he heard Mary Berry was leaving <em>The Great British Bake Off, </em>because watching him sob over an old woman was weirdly endearing and, somehow, extremely erotic.</p><p>(Their sex life was dying a painful and slow death by that point. Sometimes they’d fuck and she’d imagine he was Paul Hollywood berating her about her <em>soggy bottom, </em>and that was enough to not make her want to kill herself.)</p><p>“Unless you want to use the same razor I shave my fanny with I’m not sure I have anything.” He pulls a face, nudging her shoulder with his forehead. His laugh reverberates through her skeleton. “Oh, come on. You two get on well.”</p><p>“Fuck you.”</p><p>A thought occurs to her. She feels his eyes on her as she rummages round her bottom cupboard, eventually resurfacing with a metal blade and a bowl. He raises a bemused eyebrow. “Harry left it.”</p><p>“Left it where? The Victorian era?”</p><p>“He was old-fashioned.” She passes it over to him, watching as his fingers curl round the bowl. His fingers are extremely watchable, to the point of being obscene. “Seriously. I saw him cycling through Hyde Park on a penny farthing last week.”</p><p>He examines the blade carefully, like he’s looking at an artefact from an archaeological dig. “I thought you said he was really intense about his possessions?”</p><p>“Yeah, but he was sentimental. Probably thought I’d come across his eccentric personal hygiene equipment one day and remember him as the one who got away.” She narrows her eyes thoughtfully. “All that’s coming to mind right now…the time <em>I </em>cut myself on it, bleeding like a bitch, then him passing out and giving himself a concussion. I was on the verge of losing a finger whilst he thought he was fucking Abba. <em>Every </em>member of Abba. Listening to a slurred version of <em>Super Trouper </em>whilst you’re fading in and out of consciousness is not exactly ideal.”</p><p>“I can imagine.” He chuckles. “I don’t even know how to use this. I remember my grandad had one, fucking years ago, but I never…my dad didn’t teach me, like my grandad to him. He was a bit too busy being an alcoholic to have the time.”</p><p>“I’ll do it.” She offers, and he looks uncertain. “I promise I won’t slit your throat. Believe me, if you died, it would be a lot worse for me than it would be for you.”</p><p>“I’m not worried about you doing it on purpose. I don’t think you’re <em>that </em>unhinged.”</p><p>“Let me do it. Please.” Her hands cover his own across the side of the bowl, lacing together. Eyes look endlessly into each other. “Trust me?”</p><p>“Always,” he replies, a reflex. His grip loosens and she grins triumphantly, running the hot water tap. “Please don’t let me regret this. Pam is going to have even more questions if I turn up with half my face missing.”</p><p>“I’ll ask Claire to refer you to the plastic surgeon who does her Botox.”</p><p>“Shut up. She doesn’t use Botox.”</p><p>“Does she actually not use Botox, or is her plastic surgeon so good she makes you believe she doesn’t use Botox?”</p><p>He settles on the edge of the bath, watching as she fills the bowl with soapy water. She chucks him a towel and he catches it, pulling it around his shoulders. “If that’s the case, I’ll take his number after all. Been looking into getting a face lift.” He cups his cheeks in his hands, pulling at his skin. “What do you think? Hot?”</p><p>“I’m thinking you should save the money on the face lift and get a hair transplant instead.”</p><p>“Hey!” He playfully whacks her bare legs with the towel and she jumps back, grinning. “You <em>know </em>my hairline is a sensitive topic, you absolute fucking menace.”</p><p>She turns the tap off. “If you’re getting a face lift, maybe I’ll get a boob job.”</p><p>“If you want my opinion on that, I think God made your boobs absolutely perfect the way they are, but I am all for doing whatever makes you happy. If anything, he overcompensated. If he made you just a little bit intolerable maybe I’d be better at being <em>holier than thou.</em>”</p><p>“I think there’s quite a lot of people out there that would disagree with you on that.” His gaze is lopsided, uncertain. She shuffles next to him on the bath, bowl sat in her lap. “About me not being intolerable, I mean. Probably the boob thing too. But mostly the intolerable thing. I am a pretty disgraceful excuse of a human being.”</p><p>“You are a disgraceful excuse of a human being.” She smiles, lips pursed, concentrating as she covers his jaw in shaving foam. “It’s why I like you.”</p><p>They settle into one of those beautifully comfortable silences, punctured only by the soft movements of the blade against his skin and the ambient dripping of the tap in the bath. Their breaths coincide, in and out, the tide pushing back and pulling closer. <em>Fucking hell. </em>They’re centimetres apart, and if she wasn’t holding a literal blade, she’d duck in and kiss him senseless on the side of a bath lined with black mould and chipped clay tiles—it hits whole new ethereal planes of erotic and she wonders if she should introduce this as foreplay, because she’s so past the mood that she’s—</p><p>“I’m literally coming right now.”</p><p>His breath is caught in his throat, eyes watching her lips. He’s not really concentrating on what she’s saying. “Hm?”</p><p><em>Oh, fuck it. </em>She drops the bowl in the bath, hand curled round the back of his neck, crushing his lips in a deliciously languid kiss. He’s taken aback at first but he pushes into it, harder, and she’s about to pull off his underwear when her position slips—his hand grips onto her arm, pulling her steady. Their breaths are shorter, sharper, foreheads pressed together, and he starts laughing first.</p><p>“Why does this always happen with you?” He asks. “It’s like…we’re electrically charged. I can’t function unless I’m close to you.”</p><p>Well, at least the clingy thing isn’t just her, then.</p><p>She doesn’t answer his question. Instead, she uses the towel to dry his face and admire her handiwork. Running a thumb across his cheek, she hasn’t done a terrible job, considering. He’s too busy looking at her like she’s heaven incarnate, a stained-glass window, technicolour and broken and painstakingly put back together again. Light shines through her. She can’t see it—won’t see it—because stained-glass windows have the heart-breaking tragedy of never being able to perceive their own beauty.</p><p>She will settle for him looking at her like this, though. She’ll settle for being the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.</p><p> “You’ll do,” she remarks. He kisses her forehead. His lips are chaste, caring, <em>loving. </em>The sex is intimate. Moments together, like this, are intimate. But they are nothing compared to simply being loved—she loves better than anyone, but being loved back is something totally different. Every little corner of her flat is brimming with it, now. She thinks back to her mother’s funeral. All this excess love she’d carried around with her. Boo’s funeral. The weight of it all, fucking all-consuming—and she’s given it to him, all of it, every last fucking scrap.</p><p>“Coffee?” he says.</p><p>“You’re staying?”</p><p>“Ah, well. I am damned forever more, my love.” He smiles. “So I’m really going to fucking enjoy this, and worry about the eternal damnation much, much later.”</p>
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